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Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Treadmill Hike

Flipping through Self Magazine the other day, I found a section titled “Lose 8 pounds”.The article gave diet and workouts to help the readers lose weight.One of the workouts I found very interesting.It is called a Treadmill Hike.Basically, the workout is 20 minutes on the treadmill with varying inclines between three percent and twelve percent.I have been doing research a lot lately on increasing my walking speed.I read that walking inclines/hills can help to increase walking speed, so I decided to give this work out a try.I tore the page out of my magazine, and I headed to the gym.

The workout calls for the reader to walk at a speed of 3.5 on the treadmill for 20 minutes.Walking at this speed, the work out would take me just over a mile.Since I try to run 5k (3.1 miles) on Tuesday and Thursday nights, my plan was to run a mile on the treadmill, then start this routine, then run about another mile, or whatever would take me to 5k.I got to the gym and jumped on a treadmill.My favorite treadmill was taken, but that’s ok.

I started running with my Galloway intervals and I hit the one mile mark right around twelve minutes.I then started the treadmill hike.Wow!It was really hard!I could handle the inclines of three to six fairly easily, but when I was on an incline of seven to twelve, I was really struggling.I had to hold on just to stay on the treadmill at inclines of eight to twelve.I was sweating buckets, more than I do when running.How hard this workout was really surprised me.I thought--20 minutes, twelve percent…sounds easy, right?Boy was I wrong.It was real work!Once I was done the 20 minutes, I walked two more minutes at zero incline to catch my breath.I started to run again but I was really tired, huffing and puffing.I walked another minute or so till I hit the 2.5 mile mark and my workout was over.

Now I see why the trainer who designed this plan only called for a twenty minute workout.I think I will go with my above plan once a week—during my easy run nights.I will not push myself to far beyond what I did last night, hopefully just a little improvement each week.I do not want to give up a night of running, but I really like how challenging this plan was.I short run before and after fit well.I hope this plan increases my walking speed and my fitness level.